Should I have offered the draw?

Check out this #chess game: ashtondayrider vs Kanaciro - https://chess.com/daily/game/317577626

This was a really tough game and felt very evenly matched in the final turns. At the end I decided to offer the draw and then immediately started to doubt it after I made the offer.

My thinking at the time was that whoever moved their h pawn first would lose but we both had waiting move options (my rook on 6 and his king between g&h 7) that meant neither of us would be forced into it. There's part of me feels like I might have been able to attempt something with my more mobile rook though...

I know these endings can be tricky but I think you have to give black credit for his passed supported rook pawn, which basically ties up your king full time.

If black didn't have the a pawn, he could easily draw, wouldn't you agree? Having the a pawn can't make him worse.

Thanks for that - I'm on my phone so wasn't so easy to do!

So after looking some more at this, I think that black can easily trade his a pawn for your h pawn and then ultimately end up in a rook and one pawn versus rook endgame where you have only two results-- black wins or a draw.

So, yes, the draw offer was a smart move.

Thanks...that's interesting! I'd give a lot of credit to black to be honest...the analysis suggested I was winning for a while and then made an error (where I initatied the queen exchange at 37.)  but it all felt very balanced for a while and his runaway pawn on A was pretty damaging for me in the end! 

Thanks for adding those extra moves on to this as well, I didn't really have the experience or vision to be able to see his way out from there so that's something for me to take away and look at a bit more!

Also, good to know I made the right move offering the draw....even if I didn't fully understand why it was smart at the time...

I think this ending is very promising for Black. White's king side pawns are weak and Black can trade his passer for one or both of White's pawns and have good winning chances. This ending would not be a piece of cake, but I like Black's chances. In any case, you would have learned a lot by playing it out, and you can still learn a lot by playing it against the computer, for both sides! 

In fact, I think 52.g4? was a serious mistake by White. As a general rule. advancing pawns when you are weaker often just makes them easier to attack, and that's the case here. This is all pretty advanced for a couple of less-experienced players, and I might mess it up over the board with the clock running down, but it's interesting

Attempt what? You are down a pawn in an endgame, you are probably closer to losing then to a draw. Your opponent's decision to accept a draw is very weird, He could have played on with no risk.

You were White? My mistake. You should be very happy that your draw offer was accepted

Interesting

I am now! But I'm grateful to those like you who've taken the time to add constructive comments here - it's helping me learn a bit more from what I thought I could (maybe) see on the board and the reality that I was losing and lucky to take the half point! 

I think the thing I was missing was that I felt like the opponent's rook would stay there, so I wasn't calculating based on the fact that him giving up the a pawn to my king would give him a much better chance of a win... But then that's why I'm posting on the beginners forum! Still got a lot to learn...

52. g4 was after I'd already offered the draw and was a bit out of ideas to be honest.

You were very lucky to get away with a simple draw!

THE key moment of the game in my opinion was move 36. After black's move 35, you are up a piece, and the position is clearly winning. Your bishop is attacked. The obvious thing to do is to move it away, but you do nothing about it, instead you offer a queen trade (???). Black trades queens, takes the bishop, and now you are slightly worse. And this was a daily game, with almost unlimited time to think. Your top priority is to cut down these one-move blunders. Pretty much nothing else matters.

Looks like a drawn game and you were a pawn down. No need to overcomplicate things and continue pushing to then blunder and lose the game. Good call on the draw offer. 

I had a logic behind that queen exchange that was based on an error. My thoughts at the time were that the board was quite open, we both had exposed kings, I was bearing down on his side of the board and I had a slight material advantage...I've lost games in the past (and won a couple) because a queen was able to break free with a bit of space. So at this point I *thought* that it was a good moment to remove the queens but of course I didn't play through the exchange in my head to enough detail, as I would have realised that after my recapture the material advantage disappears. So yes, if I spent more time looking at every piece and playing it through it would have been obvious...but I'm a beginner and I'm not exactly training for the olympics.

So I can learn from that, realise that I need to spend a lot more time thinking about the board before initiating an exchange like that...or should I have instead tried to keep my queen and even thinking about the exchange was wrong?

Thinking about exchanging queens is fine. A piece, however, is more important. In chess computer terms, a piece is worth more than 3, while positional considerations almost always worth less than 1. (To be clear, 1 is the value of a pawn)

Thanks, I can see i definitely ended up losing that exchange because of the way i initiated it!